in your season of grace.
Wow! January ended quickly, didn’t it? Throughout the January journey, you were to acquire your journal, a pen, and your Bible.
For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come (1 Timothy 4:8).
Every day you wake up is another chance to draw closer to your Creator, to receive His favor, His grace. Grace is the acceptance and welcome into the arms of God. We can't do anything to earn grace. It is a free gift of God when we believe in His Son, Jesus Christ. This grace is a wonderful package filled with fruits of God's Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23a) and His promises in Psalm 91.
We draw closer to God, our Creator, through spiritual exercises. In our previous discussions, we agreed that the true “me” is spirit living inside the physical body; and that spirit is driven by a soul—the center of our emotions and thoughts. Our emotions and how we think create our will—what we will do and what we will not do. God, our Father, doesn’t force us to do anything. He clearly lays out His will for us in the Scriptures of the Bible and allows us to decide whether or not we’ll obey His will.
The will of God is called perfect will because, at the end of the day, every godly desire in our hearts works our perfectly in our lives.
The will of the human is called permissive will because when we decide to do or not do something without consulting God, He cannot come in to stop us. Why? Our Father wants us to grow up into strong and mature spirit-beings as our physical body, or human being, is also maturing on earth.
We grow up into spiritual maturity by doing spiritual exercises every day of our natural lives. These exercises can be summed up in a term called spiritual discipline.
Spiritual Discipline is training that develops and corrects as we learn how to walk in the perfect will of God. If we are to grow up in the perfect will of God, we must be disciplined. Discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, acknowledging that there are consequences which will be applied to correct disobedience.
The root of this word is disciple (a follower of Christ Jesus). Was Jesus not the best example of a disciplined person of excellent character in complete obedience even unto the cross? Once you have decided to follow Jesus, you must become like Him to be truly identified as His disciple. The “exercises” of spiritual discipline include:
1. Fasting: The biblical discipline of abstaining from food for spiritual purposes. (Matt. 6:17-18)
2. Intercession: To pray on behalf of someone other than yourself. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)
3. Meditation: Quiet contemplation (thinking) of spiritual truths found in the Bible. (Joshua 1:8)
4. Prayer: Talking with God. (Luke 11:1-4; 9-13)
5. Tithing: One-tenth of our finances (money) that we give back to God for use in His kingdom. (Malachi 3:10)
6. Quiet Time: Giving God our undivided attention for a predetermined amount of time for the purpose of talking to and hearing from Him. (Luke 5:15-16)
Quiet Time is a basic ingredient in a maturing relationship with God. *Time with God moves our experience as believers out of the realm of religion and into the realm of relationship (1).
This discipline is most valuable when you make it a priority to Walk with God on earth . . . as it is in heaven.
QUIET TIME IS “GET SET” TIME. It’s when you get still as a statue so that you can hear the signal to GO! It is during this time that you set up your prayer altar and practice the skills of meditation and journaling.
JANUARY . . . On Your Mark! was a month of preparing your daily Bible reading schedule. Each morning must be marked with prayer. Your prayer altar is the time you set every morning to speak with God. Mine is 1:00 a.m. What’s yours? The Bible reading calendar above helps guide you to complete reading the whole Bible in a year. However, if you cannot read it all in one sitting, then read what you can in the morning, add some in the afternoon, and finish up in the evening. Your body gets three meals a day, right? Feed your soul (your spirit-body) the same way.
QUIET TIME is a special time every child of God, a disciple, sets aside daily, preferably, early in the morning, to meet the Lord through praise and worship, find out His plans through His Word, and submit his or her plans to Him for His approval and guidance through prayer. Remember God loves you, and He wants the best for you: Hebrews 12:1-13 and 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
Practice meeting God at your prayer altar (the time you set to meet Him every day), reading a passage in the Bible, meditating on it, and writing down whatever you are hearing from your soul. This is spiritual exercise, or spiritual discipline, which builds your godliness (your relationship with God) and profits your life on earth as it was designed in heaven before you entered your mother’s womb.
Stay in the grace, the perfect will, of God.
If you have any questions about anything, please contact us. We are here for you; and we want to hear from you!
© 2023 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem. All rights reserved. Published by The Light In Me Enterprise. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
1. Stanley, Charles. The Glorious Journey. (1996). USA: Thomas Nelson Pub., 268-271; 458-506. *501.
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